Critique and metacritique: contribution and

responsibility of the communication theories*

Crítica e metacrítica: contribuição e
responsabilidade das teorias da comunicação

V ERA V EIGA F RA N ÇA **
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas,
Departamento de Comunicação Social. Belo Horizonte-MG, Brazil

ABSTRACT
This paper discusses the cyclical nature of the critical approaches in communication * A first version of this
text was presented at
during the last 40 years in Brasil. The 1970s and 1980s were characterized by different the GT Epistomology of
theories that denounced the commodification of culture, the emptying of the symbolic Communication of the 22
Annual Meeting of Compós,
and the hegemonic struggles over the interpretation of reality. The following 20 years at the Universidade
were marked by the abandonment of a certain critical bias in order to focus on more Federal da Bahia, Salvador,
from June 4-7, 2013.
specific aspects of the communicative process and product. Finally, from Boltanski’s
recent discussions, and through the concepts of critique and metacritique, this paper ** Professor of the
Graduate Program in
highlights the importance of widening the perspectives on communicational analysis. Communication at UFMG,
Keywords: Communication theories, Critical theory, Criticism and metacritique Belo Horizonte-MG, Brazil.
Coordinator of the GRIS
(Grupo de Pesquisa em
RESUMO Imagem e Sociabilidade
da FAFICH/UFMG
Este texto discute o caráter cíclico das abordagens críticas da comunicação no Brasil nos research group on Image
últimos 40 anos. Os anos 70, 80 se caracterizaram por teorias de diferentes matrizes que and sociability), Works in
the fields of Communication
denunciaram a mercantilização da cultura, o esvaziamento do simbólico, as disputas Theories, Communication
and Media Culture and
por hegemonia na interpretação da realidade. Os 20 anos seguintes foram marcados Research Methodology in
por certo abandono do viés crítico, em favor do tratamento de aspectos mais recortados Communication. E-mail:
veravfranca@yahoo.com.br
do processo e do produto comunicativo. A partir das discussões recentes de Boltanski,
situando os conceitos de crítica e metacrítica, apontamos, ao final, a importância do
resgate de olhares mais abrangentes nas análises comunicacionais.
Palavras-chave: Teorias da comunicação, Teoria crítica, Crítica e metacrítica

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.11606/issn.1982-8160.v8i2p101-116
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 Critique and metacritique: contribution and responsibility
of the communication theories

T
he theories, concepts and authors grouped under the aegis of
Theories of Communication are neither homogeneous nor consensual,
they even vary according to the period. At certain times, some authors
and concepts are “de rigeur”; at others, they are abandoned and replaced. In this
changing context – that witnesses the fashions and idiosyncracies constituting
the field of communication studies – it is interesting to note that critical bias is
also, in some way, cyclical. Some periods are marked by the strong, deprecating
content of reflections; this is sometimes followed by a change of tone, leaving
aside criticisms.
Nearly fifty years ago, Umberto Eco (1979 [1964]) wrote Apocalyptic and
Integrated, providing a lucid review of the theories that were divided, at the
time, between the American and the European studies – both, hostage to the
fetish concept of mass. The work consecrated the two labels above by joining
them in order to name two opposing blocks: the American administrative
research (Mass Communication Research), with its concepts of mass culture
(supposedly acritical); and the Frankfurt School, with its concept of industrial
culture (rabidly critical).
Communications studies (thus named) started, in Brazil, in the 1970s,
1.  In 1960, the Federal when Journalism courses became Communications courses1. It is interesting
Council of Education
(CFE-MEC), through
to note that, in that period, the distinction between apocalyptic and integrated
Resolution n° 11/69, and between critical and descriptive studies (and groups) made complete
changed the programs in
Journalism into programs sense. The Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School was in fashion as was
in Social Communications. the rejection of American studies and the Functionalist school in a division
that, in the academic field, roughly reflected the left/right opposition in the
political scene. The concepts of class and ideology were central, in the critical
perspective.
During these forty years, theories and concepts underwent reaccommo-
dations and changes; and today, critical perspectives such as the concept of
ideology occupy an obscure and barely meaningful place. In a rough sense,
this period could possibly be divided into two blocks of 20 years: the period
1970-1989, marked by the arrival and dissemination of the Critical Theory and
others from the Marxist matrix; and, the period 1990-2010, that distanced itself
from these perspectives, criticised and abandoned them.
This is the purpose of the present reflection, which is organized around the
following themes: a brief review of the critical matrices, their abandonment,
the constitution of a new theoretical-conceptual scenario and, finally, questions
on where we stand and what lies ahead.

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CRITICAL MATRICES
An in-depth review of the critical matrices which fed the communicational
thinking in the 1970s and 1980s would greatly exceed the scope of this work,
which provides an overview of some of the central references of that period.

a) Critical Theory
According to the interdisciplinary program formulated by Max Horkheimer
in 1931, the purpose of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt was to
do a global analysis of society – from its economic infrastructure to its ide-
ational bases. Due to a series of reasons and conflicts, the output of the Institute
remained centered upon the field of culture and ideas, composing what can be
identified as a triple criticism: the project of an advanced capitalist society, the
culture of that society and positivist science.
Recalling the content of these criticisms, the complaint of the commodi-
fication of society and the ever-present profit motive stands out as a central
feature, contaminating the culture and causing its degradation and subservi-
ence. In this context, culture finds itself reduced to ideology and inscribed in
a logic of alienation; science bends and submits to the productivist and com-
mercial objectives of the capitalist society. For Adorno, true culture cannot
but be implicitly critical; the leaven of truth in culture is denial. Converted
into cultural assets, tied to a system of commodification, culture denies its
own raison d’être.
As Voirol (2011) emphasized, the term cultural industry, coined by
Adorno and Horkheimer to name the culture submitted to mercantile logic,
acquires a critical and provocative nature in German when it appears in the
same word – Kulturindustrie, joining two terms that are totally opposed.
Industry is usually associated with economy, rationality, planning and strate-
gic interest; culture evokes creation, originality, autonomy and freedom. The
term cultural industry constitutes, according to that author, an oxymoron
and a concept of complaint: “Through an association of antithetical semantic
universes, it aims at revealing what we do not see, namely the degradation
of culture in modern capitalist society” (Voirol, 2011: 127). It is worth stat-
ing that Adorno exerted a strong influence on the development of Brazilian
researchers in the 1970s and occupied a significant place in the academic
output of that decade.

b) The theory of hegemony

Gramsci’s influence in Brazil was, meanwhile, stifled by the weight of
the Frankfurtian perspective; it arrives later, around the 1980s, through the

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work of Latin American researchers and the first echoes of Cultural Studies.
It is important, here, to call attention to the relational perspective that marks
the Gramscian approach to culture through the “hegemonic culture – sub-
altern culture” binome (Lopes, 1990: 52). Culture, for the author, is a field of
battles and negotiations; subaltern cultures neither result from the imposition
of hegemonic culture, nor are they pure resistance. Culture cannot be reduced
to a hegemonic whole, but is cris-crossed by ambiguities and contradictions;
it contains trans- class elements and carries the marks of experience and his-
tory. Thus, a concrete analysis of cultural practices as well as their uses and
transformations is important to Gramsci.
The concept of hegemony is central to Gramscian thinking and is of
ultimate importance to communications studies. The concept comes from
Lenin (related to the dictatorship of the proletariat). Used by Gramsci, it gains
original development and comes to replace and, at times, to complement,
the concept of domination. It is tied to the coercion exercised by a dominant
class over the dominated groups, and comes with the idea of intellectual and
moral direction: “every ‘hegemonic’ relationship is necessarily a pedagogic
relationship” (Gramsci, 1974: 69). In this positive aspect of direction, the concept
guides the analysis of power relationships between groups, classes, nations
and, beyond the political-economic sphere, concerns the realm of ideas, beliefs
and representations.

c) P. Bourdieu’s theory of domination

Bourdieu’s theory had weak penetration in Brazil, in the area of commu-
nications studies (in contrast to its strong presence in the field of Education).
It concerns, however, a sociology of culture based on relationships of class
dominance that operates through the symbolic – thus, having strong incidence
in the field of communications. Bourdieu, however, was not interested in the
2.  One exception was a study of media2 and he virulently criticised the mass mediologues that, through
small book published by
Bourdieu in 1996, Sur la
conceptual syncretism, were developing a fantastic sociology or mythology:
télévision, followed by neither sociology (by the lack of appropriate empirical references) nor pure
L’emprise du journalisme,
which had little impact. theory (by the inability to deduce), “a mediated culture is a metaphysical
one – in the Kantian sense – that functions poorly” (Bourdieu; Passeron,
1963: 1007, translation by the authors of this paper).
Since Bourdieu totally discredited the theories of media of his time, we can
wonder why he did not propose how they should be studied. He also criticized
the methodological mistake of this mythology of the sociologists, of dealing
with the wrong object and sticking (succumbing) to the syntax of the prophetic
discourse of the media. The central issue, this eminent sociologist pointed out,

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would not be found in the form or content of the mediated discourses, but in
the system of symbolic domination, through a model of reproduction, of a
generative type, “able to correlate the approach of these structures to that of
practices through habitus” (Miceli, 1974: 39).
The power of words, for the author, is not in the words themselves but in
the process that legitimates them, as well as in those who speak them3. Classes 3.  “What gives power
to words and slogans,
and class fractions are engaged in a symbolic battle to impose a definition power to maintain or
of the world according to their own interests, to disseminate and legitimate subvert order, is the
belief in the legitimacy of
a framework of ideological positions that reproduce the field of social posi- words and of those who
tions in a transfigured form. Symbolic systems attain their political function as pronounce them, belief
whose production does
instruments of domination – to impose and legitimate it – acting as structured not derive from the word
and structuring instruments of communication (Bourdieu, 1989: 11). It deals, competency” (Bourdieu,
1989: 15, our emphasis).
therefore, with a struggle for control of the institutions that guarantee and
perpetuate their symbolic power.
So, for Bourdieu, the study of media does not mean much in itself (its
discourse is already known); the real issue – what media really is – is attained
through the analysis of media ownership, of the system of production of sym-
bolic representations.

d) Reification and the emptying of the symbolic

Although we do not deal, here, with an articulated theoretical framework,
it is possible to group a heterogeneous set of authors who shared a pessimistic
and strongly nihilistic outlook on the analysis of contemporary society. This
society is marked by the logic of consumption, the overwhelming presence of
the means of communication, the avalanche of information and the prolifera-
tion of images.
First, we recall Guy Debord and his concept of reference The Society of
the Spectacle, first published in 1967 – preceding the libertarian discussion
that erupted in the world in May 1968. Philosopher, social agitator, and one
of the founders of Situationist International, Debord vilified capitalist society
and the reign of the commodity as well as the banalization and emptying of
life they caused:
The world at once present and absent, which the spectacle makes visible, is the
world of the commodity dominating all that is lived. The world of the commodity
is thus shown for what it is, because its movement is identical to the estrangement
of men among themselves and in relation to their global product (Debord, 1997:
28, author’s emphasis).

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4.  “The society which
carries the spectacle does
not dominate the un-
derdeveloped regions by
its economic hegemony
alone. It dominates them
as the society of the
spectacle” (Debord, 1997:
38, author’s emphasis).
5.  Parodying Bourdieu, he
says: “There is no theory of
media. The media revolu-
tion remains thus far both
empirical and mystical, as
much in McLuhan as in
those who challenge him”
(Baudrillard, 1972: 209).
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The society of the spectacle was completely taken over by the commodity
form, which is the contemporary form of domination4. In this society, “the agent
of the spectacle is the opposite of the individual, renouncing all autonomous
qualities”; “the star is the object of identification with the seemingly shallow
life that has to compensate for the fragmented productive specializations which
are actually lived” (Ibid: 40).
Another great, nihilistic, critical thinker who, at the end of the 20th cen-
tury, represented the tragic version of post-modern theory was J. Baudrillard. He
announced (foretold) the impossibility of communication in the mediated era,
the loss of meaning in the image society (images that say nothing, the extinction
of the symbolic, diluted in the realm of simulation), the consummation of the
subject in the society of consumption. For the author, “cultural consumption
may thus be defined as the time and place of the caricatural resurrection, and of
the parodic evocation of what no longer exists” (Baudrillard, 1970: 147). Recalling
the famous phrase of McLuhan (The medium is the message), he adds: the true
message of the media is not the manifest content of sounds and images that
they convey but the constraining pattern linked to the very technical essence
of those media, of the disarticulation of the real, into successive and equivalent
signs, on the basis of the denial of things and of the real.
This, then, is the truth of mass media: it is their function to neutralize the lived,
unique and eventual character of the world, and substitute for it a multiple uni-
verse of media which, as such, are homogenous one with another, signifying each
other reciprocally and referring back and forth to each other. In the extreme case,
they each become the content of the others – and that is the totalitarian message
of a consumer society” (Ibid., 1972: 189, author’s emphasis).
Disbelieving the contributions of the theories of communication5 as well
as the nature of the means of communication, he predicts that it is illusory to
believe in another possibility of using the media. What characterizes the mass
media is that “they are anti-mediatory, and intransitive. They fabricate non-
communication” (Ibid.: 217, our emphasis).
THE CRITIQUE OF CRITIQUE
From the very distinct epistemological matrices and theoretical foundations,
those theories and authors come closer together through their critical biases
and denouncing content. The criticism is directed at capitalism, at its logic of
domination, at the commercial nature that rules not only the economic relations
in the strict sense but which also permeates the set of social relationships and
compromises the constitution of the subjects – their humanity, autonomy and
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capacity for agency. Communication, communications technology, the media

and media products are seen as instruments of domination, as alienating prac-
tices, ideological in their content and in the relationship they establish. On the
horizon of these criticisms – however, remote and almost unattainable – is the
search for an ideal of emancipation.
As already mentioned above, those theories and authors, which had huge
repercussion and impact during the 1970s and 1980s, were gradually aban-
doned, criticised and some were nearly discredited. The Critical Theory and
the Adornian perspective, especially in the area of communications studies,
were strongly rejected.
This then raises the question: why this abandonment, if most of those
theories were shown to be consistent, based on legitimate assumptions and
articulated with solid arguments? What is the reason for the indifference with
which they are remembered if their purposes – criticism of capitalism, denun-
ciation of oppression, pursuit of social justice and the autonomy of subjects – are
still, today, considered appropriate and necessary?
No theory is valid for eternity. Some are abandoned, supplanted by more
complete theories, or proved to be misguided, or refuted by the facts. But, above
all, it is important to remember that theories respond to issues and problems that
are historically posited, within a certain context, given the particular cirum-
stances. A change in reality changes the setting of reflection and the axis of
inquiry. This is, therefore, one of the responses to the relative abandonment or
ostracism of the theories discussed above. The world that enters the 21st century
is not exactly the same as the last decades of the 20th century.
Furthermore, after passing through the scrutiny of epistemological criti-
cism and confronted by new thinking, those theories presented weaknesses
and inconsistencies.
Domination and alienation are processes that cannot be understood
empirically. They have to be unveiled from indicators and appear as researcher’s
analytical constructs. They are abstract processes, resulting from analytical
syntheses. For some of those theories, there were questions about their abstrac-
tion and distance from reality (lack of empirical evidence) as well as about the
weight that they give to illusion and to the notion of the unconscious. These
syntheses were said to be flawed by their inability, or myopia, to read reality
and interpret indicators (or even the lack thereof).
All those theories shared the same type of approach: they were totalizing
theories that treated reality as a homogenous whole and paid little attention to
differences and contradictions. This totalizing aspect raised a set of criticisms
known and shared by all of us, researchers in the area:

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– the underestimation of the subjects, of their critical spirit and creative

ability as well as their power of resistance;
– their monolithic tone, insensitive to differences; their inability to deal
with singularities, to account for the unique;
– the simplification (when not the cancelation) of the potential of lan-
guages and of semiotic processes;
– the lack of attention to, and even the incomprehension of, the operative
processes of different media and of their power of agency.

NEW PERSPECTIVES
Seeking to overcome such weaknesses and inconsistencies, and instigated
by new developments and new issues, the years 1990 and 2000 indicated a
search for other theoretical and conceptual horizons. Such change is well
expressed in the trajectory of a renowned French sociologist, L. Boltanski.
He was a former student and disciple of Bourdieu, under whose guidance he
worked for a long time. Boltanski, around the 1990s, distanced and positioned
himself critically against Bourdieu’s theory, proposing and developing a
pragmatic sociology of critique, focused on the observation of actors’ daily
routine, their critical discourses, their consciousness regarding their own
needs and choices.
Assuming more clearly a pragmatist perspective, to emphasize practice,
he moves away from comprehensive readings to focus on actors in their work
environments, seeking to describe their routines, situations of dispute, perfor-
mance and discursive production. In his words,
To this end, it seemed to us to be necessary [to understand and describe the
situated activity of the social actors] to bracket an unduly powerful explanatory
system, whose mechanical utilization risked crushing the data (as if sociologists
already knew in advance what they were going to discover) so as to observe,
naively, as it were, what actors do, the way they interpret the intentions of others,
the way they argue about their case, and so on…. To be brief, our move therefore
consisted in re-tilting from a critical orientation to a search for a better description
(…) (Boltanski, 2009: 46)

The movement pointed out by the author, for the sake of greater attention
and sensitivity to data from reality, was therefore to abandon or replace the
strong theoretical apparatus in search of a more descriptive approach of the
object of study. The sociological démarche into which he ventures replaces the
analysis of vertical relations by that of horizontal relations; it shifts the emphasis
from structures to actors’ attention – their actions and discourses.

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A similar movement could also be observed in our field and in commu-

nications studies as such. The ideological analyses and the critique of cultural
domination have been replaced by more specific and focused studies on the
diversity and plurality of communicative practices, discourses and interventions
of actors. The broader structural framework in which the means of communica-
tion are situated (and act) was left aside in order to focus on the communicative
processes, their particularities, complexity, elements and dynamics.
In this movement, researchers’ attention addressed several fronts: atten-
tion to the subject and to the processes of subjectivation; the organization of
groups, networks and communities; the configuration of new media formats,
media convergence and transmedia processes. Studies focused on the analysis
of actors’ performance and their struggle for success – and for 15 minutes of
fame. Cultural Studies opened the doors for different types of uses of cultural
products; they rescued the legitimacy of satisfaction and pleasure deriving
from the consumption of trivial products; they highlighted identity struggles
and processes.
New objects of study have been the focus of communication research in
Brazil for the past 20 years: theoretical references have been introduced, and
other concepts as well as a great diversity of authors have enriched and imple-
mented the analysis. This change evidences the growing lack of interest for
strong theoretical apparatus and for more comprehensive analyses.
At the moment, the culture perspective plays a central part in articulating
knowledge in the communication field. The media culture, or culture of the
media, has replaced the old mass culture, or cultural industry and topics such as
cultural diversity, cultural pluralism are on the agenda. The concept of mediatic
culture concerns the cultural panorama of contemporary society, marked by the
centrality of the media, in which everyday experience and mediatic production 6.  Lucia Santaella advocates
the introduction (or
are interpenetrated, creating a composite cultural picture, marked by tensions, creation) of the expres-
sion Media Culture in
clashes, mixes, reproductions and impositions6. The defining axis of this new Brazil. She distinguishes
concept is the scenario and operation of the media themselves: it reveals a it from the concept of
mass culture. It refers to
process of duplication and reproduction of events and narratives across differ- the culture resulting from
ent media, a movement in which the world and the reality are shaped by new mediatic convergence, from
interactive media. “The
dynamics that have been called transmedia dynamics. fundamental feature of
Furthermore, the expression means of communication has already fallen media culture is mobility,
the transfer of information
into disuse, and been replaced by the term media. The shift to the term media, from one media to another,
beyond the technological issue (emergence and diversification of technological with only a few changes.
The communication data
apparatuses) also expresses a broadening of understanding of its nature, its do not tend to last long;
however, they multiply their
transformative potential. Media, thus, encompasses a broader meaning which appearances as long as they
includes technology, language and the shaping of relations (interaction model). do” (Santaella, 1996: 36).

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This new object includes so many things now that the term media became
generic and the term device was aggregated to it. Media has to do with that
set; when dealing with one means in particular, we look at it as a device. The
analysis today (and despite the Foucaldian understanding of the concept of
7  On the subject, see device7) becomes more descriptive-operational and seeks to study the distinc-
Agamben, 2009.
tions and specificities of each means, its kind of language, forms of operation
and shaping of a relationship (or sociability) model.
These concepts (media, media culture) are more sensitive and permeable to
the analysis of the specificity of apparatuses and devices producing representa-
tions and symbolic goods, to the diversity of forms and speeches that circulate in
this new universe, and to the plurality of scenarios and cultural circuits. There
is not one single culture in the field of media culture. The analyses developed,
however, do not take into consideration the relations between media products
and power relations, media and the structure of society, and tend to circum-
scribe the cultural dynamics to the relationship between the different objects.
In this more contemporary configuration of our field of study, and along
with the emergence of so many new concepts, the abandonment of some – such
as ideology, class, domination – which were central decades earlier, is observed.

PERSPECTIVES
The movement of theories is cyclical: critical phases fade away; critical thinking
that is abandoned does return. What we see today are restless voices expres-
sing the need for a more comprehensive view that takes into account both the
dynamics of domination and the prospects for change.
The English philosopher T. Eagleton, in his irreverent style, draws attention
to the disorganization of the cultural theory from the 1980s onwards. Having
strayed from its original moment (founded on a critical approach of class dif-
ference and domination), it seeks to identify the continuation of the policy in
other spaces and media. “The emancipation which had failed in the streets and
factories could be acted out instead in erotic intensities or the floating signifier,”
he mocks. New theories of discourse, deviance and desire become alternatives
to a failed leftwing political ideology, says the author, bringing back what the
traditional left had belittled: “art, pleasure, gender, power, sexuality, language,
madness, desire, spirituality, family, body, the ecosystem, the unconscious,
ethnicity, lifestyle, hegemony” (Ibid.: 52). What had been abandoned is recov-
ered, and what had been prioritized, in a curious transformation (or distortion)
is abandoned, including the reading of classics: for the successors of Cultural
Studies, states Eagleton, “thinkers like Antonio Gramsci came to mean theories
of subjectivity, rather than workers’ revolution” (Ibid.: 53).

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In an essayistic style and without any academic formalism, the English

thinker shows the various trends and paths offered by contemporary thought
that result from the political failure of the projects of previous years. In the same
perspective, the American philosopher R. Rorty (1998) criticizes the American
cultural left for dissolving political action in the game of subjective differ-
ences, in a theoretical deviation which promotes the distancing and rejection
of any form of effective participation in real changes in society. According to
the author, this debate, apparently distant from the very issue being discussed
here, is actually central to this reflection – and to what is unsettling in the
development of new theories, including communications theories and research.
Faced with the multifaceted framework of concerns guiding the work today
and the choice of conceptual apparatus, and with the discussion of themes and
references, something got lost along the way: the critique of inequality and of 8.  “The main criticism
suffering in the world, as well as the ideal of a collective project. we have made of critical
sociology is, briefly put,
Returning to Boltanski, it is very illustrative to indicate the latest twist its overarching character
in the French sociologist’s trajectory. After having left Bourdieu’s matrix and and the distance at
which it holds itself from
the strong explanatory device that represented his sociology in the 1990s (cf. the critical capacities
previously mentioned), he revised again his theoretical-methodological research developed by the actors in
situations of everyday life.
apparatus in order to recover part of the abandoned tradition. The pragmatic sociology
Having brought together critical sociology and the pragmatic sociology of critique, by contrast,
fully acknowledges actors’
of critique (Bourdieu’s perspective and his own), Boltanski stresses the mutual critical capacities and the
creativity with which they
dependency and complementarity that can be established between both, point- engage in interpretation
ing out the limits (and risks) of the pragmatic sociology of critique (his) as it and situated action. But it
seems difficult, pursuing
loses track of totality. It is, according to him, unable to go beyond the fragmented this programme, to realize
and private criticism of the actors and cannot be a global criticism of society8. all the ambitions connected
with a metacritical orienta-
Without this notion (without an idea of the totality and of the social order tion. We therefore find
that brings us together as a society) how is a project of the emancipation of ourselves confronted, on the
side of the critical sociology,
individuals constructed or supported? Such a project cannot sustain itself in with a construct that paves
personal criticism and dissatisfaction because emancipation is not a process the way for candidly
critical possibilities, but
that is experienced individually, but the result of a project of society and of furnishes itself with agents
subjected to structures
collective social dynamics. that escape them, and skip
To focus on the role of criticism in the theory, and to emphasize the impor- over the critical capacity of
actors. We therefore find
tance of a critical theory, Boltanski develops and presents two pairs of concepts ourselves on the side of
– critique and metacritique; simple exteriority and complex exteriority. the pragmatic sociology of
critique, with a sociology
The criticism of individuals and social criticism set, for the author, two that is genuinely attentive
distinct concepts, which he calls critique and metacritique. The concept of to critical actions developed
by actors, but whose own
critique refers to isolated criticisms, developed by individuals from their own critical potentialities
experience, which is localized and specific. On the other hand, metacritique is seem limited” (Boltanski,
2009: p. 43; translation
a second degree criticism, which rests on individual criticisms, feeds on them into English: 2011).

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and gathers them, constituting and arising as a critique of the social order.
It is, therefore, a theoretical construction and aims to unveil the oppression,
exploitation and domination of a society or social groups.
Boltanski adds to these two concepts a new pair: simple exteriority and
complex exteriority. To make a reading of reality (to seize it), it is necessary to
place oneself outside of it, to reach an exteriority. The description of a reality
(made by the researcher or by the ordinary individual) can only be done from
an external point of view; it is what he calls simple exteriority. On the other
hand, the complex exteriority is also an external movement of the reading of
reality, which is based on simple exteriority; yet, it carries or adds a judgment
of value about the social order – it summons a metacritique.
Descriptive sociology (the same one Boltanski was doing) lies on the level
of a simple exteriority; it focuses on the critique of individuals, but does not
intend to deal with the social order. It does not do metacritique, he claims. In a
bold review of his own work, Boltanski wonders: what is the role of this sociol-
ogy? Knowledge for knowledge? Wouldn’t it have another aim, in addition to
legitimizing itself as a field of knowledge?
We can ask ourselves the same thing regarding communication studies.
The abandonment of broader theoretical references and critical theories was
followed by specialized analyses, more detailed descriptive studies of devices,
languages, hearings, ordinary subjects and unique subjectivities. What do we
aim at by promoting this change? Moreover, what are the goals of our research?
Why, and for what, do we do research (aside from feeding our curriculum vitae
and increasing the bibliography in the area)? The quest for this knowledge of
objects and practices of communication serves what purpose, and for whom?
Such inquiries aim to draw attention to the political dimension of our
theoretical choices and to the responsibility of our interpretation – because
they fall back on reality. Our production develops professionals and not only
guides their actions as, through them and the natural process of diffusion of
knowledge, it enhances their return to common sense. What kind of result and
change does this knowledge that we produce, upon returning to the sphere of
everyday life of society, lead to? As an interpretation of reality, and consider-
ing that we act in the world guided by shared interpretations, what kind of
action and behavior does the knowledge of media disseminated by Brazilian
researchers trigger in society?
Reinforcing the idea of this return, of this dynamic of mutual feeding that
takes place between the production of knowledge about reality and the reality
itself, it is worth retrieving another concept issue dealt with by Boltanski: the
degree of reality of reality. Making a distinction between reality and world (the

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reality as the choices one makes in a world that largely exceeds one’s ability to
act), he says “the reality suffers from a kind of intrinsic fragility such that the
reality of reality must incessantly be reinforced to endure” (Boltanski, 2009: 65,
our translation). This reinforcement is its degree of generalization – how much
it is shared by many, for a community. The reality of some, of a few, does not
impose itself forcefully as reality; it is its rise in generality (the development of
exchanges and consensus around it) that strengthens it as a collective reality,
which reinforces the sense of belonging and boosts the action of the subjects.
Well, what does this have to do with us, communication researchers, and
how does this issue serve as a starting point for thinking about the rescue
of critique in our current theoretical frameworks – without losing what they
brought as openness and enrichment in the understanding of communicative
processes?
As stated above, to nourish common sense, to participate in the selection
process, the interpretation and generalization of reality, of what is the reality of
reality, is a task of great responsibility. It is a result of our choices to generalize
readings which state a reality experienced, or that go beyond it; that confirm
or criticize it. Well, in this way it is possible to talk about the inadequacy of
merely descriptive studies, which cannot or dare not go beyond the findings,
as well as rescue the role of a science committed to change and improvement,
focused on going beyond the existing, and capable of producing metacritique.
For us, communication researchers, more than collecting and observing
the unique view of ordinary subjects and their possible contestatory discourses,
as well as emphasizing the differences and speaking in plurality, isn’t it our
place also to unify these criticisms and contribute to the constitution of a criti-
cal discourse in society? From a new look on communicational reality – and
through it, the reality as a whole?
This does not mean, obviously, returning to the old theories of domination
(although it deals with recovering and keeping what they brought as revealing
and insurmountable). It is not a question of defending this or that affiliation. It
deals with (and this is the point which this reflection wants to reach) advocating
a permanent critical view in communication studies; a perspective that, atten-
tive to the specific and singular, does not limit itself to objects and self-reliant
reasonings and can always insert these objects back into the larger context in
which they exist, act, condition and are subject to conditionings.
P. Ricoeur, examining two phenomena which are fundamental to the exis-
tence of social life, two opposite sides and two complementary functions that
typify the social and cultural imagination – ideology and utopia – highlights a
common trait among them, which is the ambiguity: “they each have a positive

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and a negative side, a constructive and a destructive role, a constitutive and a

pathological dimension” (Ricoeur, 1991: 66).
The ideology, he says, involves two antagonistic traits, which are distortion
(cf. the Marxist conception of class domination) and integration (cf. the discus-
sion of the symbolic action by Geertz). This trait of integration is necessary for
the constitution of social life itself:
where there are human beings, there cannot already be a non-symbolic way of
existence, and even less a sort of non-symbolic action. The action is immediately
governed by cultural patterns that provide arrays for the organization of social
and psychological processes, perhaps exactly like the genetic codes (...) they pro-
vide models for the organization of organic processes. (…) Our attention to the
functioning of ideology at this extremely basic and symbolic level demonstrates
the real constitutive role that ideology plays on social existence (Ibid: 83).

Therefore, the ideology is necessary and positive in its function of inte-

gration; it reaches a pathological level when it causes distortion to ensure the
dominance of one group over another. Well, utopia also has its two sides: its
downside is unreality, fragmentation, deviation; the positive side is to extend
the exploration of the field of the possible:
Utopia introduces imaginative variations on the topics of society, power, gover-
nment, and family. The kind of neutralization which constitutes the imagination
as fiction is found in the action in the utopia. I propose that utopia, approached at
this radical level as a function of nowhere in the constitution of social or symbolic
action, is the counterpart of our first concept of ideology [as distortion]. We can
say that there is no social integration without social subversion (Ibid.: 89).

Ricoeur’s suggestion – the relationship between ideology and utopia, the

existence of its two sides – opens to us hints of how, in the analysis of media
products (which are symbolic products), it is possible to perceive the integration/
distortion tensions, unrealities/new possibilities. Our object of study is the raw
material in which the work of ideology and utopia, in the construction of the
cultural imagination and its incidence in the action of social subjects, takes
place. It’s not our place, as communicators, to do extensive analyses of society;
however, the critical reading that we’re capable of doing of the symbolic systems
of cohesion and rupture, of crystallization and tensing of reality, puts us in a
privileged place to understand our contemporaneity. Perhaps, to produce and
generalize interpretations that promote actions towards the broadening of our
horizons.

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This text was received at 07 March, 2014 and accepted at 04 September, 2014.

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